Hunt for White Gold

by Mark Keating

  Dandon watched him meander away. He stroked his narrow beard and tapped his thumbnail against his gold front teeth.

  The sounds of another triumphant play by George and Albany drew him back to the comfort of the tavern. His hand darted from his chin to feel in his outer pocket where his fingers fell upon the cold vial of laudanum. He smiled softly and walked slowly back into the dim hole.

  Chapter Four

  Charles Town, South Carolina. Undated.

  The letter.

  For the intimate concern of the pyrate hitherto familiar as Patrick Devlin.

  Allow it to be known that on receipt of this communication it have passed that the member of crew known as Peter Sam, afforded the position of quartermaster amongst, has been removed from company at my request to be brought to the body of my Office.

  Your presence is demanded to attend at the address marked at the finality of correspondence. Your attendance will secure the freedom of your fellow.

  Your failure in attendance will result in the forfeit of his life after the necessary act of securing the names of formal officers to be passed to the appropriate Offices of Governments most active in the acquisition of your ignoble crew.

  In my possession Warrants of Execution signed by three Councils are to be issued to the Navy Board should you also be in failure of attendance.

  I will know the hour this letter reaches your hand. Attend alone and without force. Announce at the House. There will be no harm brought if no member of your crew enters the streets of the town.

  Magnolia House. New Church. Charles Town. Southern

  Carolina Colony of Charles II.

  IGNATIUS

  Hands were needed. There were plenty of hunched rat-like fiends hanging around the heaving shores of Madagascar to pick and choose from. Men with dark and soiled histories that had found themselves hiding or lost among the silent palms and secret alleyways.

  But these could be dangerous men, men that needed watching. Devlin preferred, and a year of the preference had paid well, to find good men who could be swayed, be shown the benefit of having pockets weighted down with coin instead of troubles. And his success had brought fame and admiration.

  Why, was it not barely a year ago that the pirate Devlin had stolen a King’s fortune that enabled some of his crew to retire like lords themselves amongst the islands?

  Was there not a couple of Portuguese hands, pressed from the Verde islands where the pirate Devlin had stolen his great frigate, Shadow, now living it up on Providence with Jennings, Hornigold and the rest?

  And those Dutch fellows. Broad, tall trees of men who had signed up after the pirate Devlin attacked their Dutch slaver. One of those now lived in Spain, married to a lady of the Court no less, did he not?

  True or not, the tales brought whispers to his back and respectful nods to his face wherever Devlin strode out.

  He always seemed in a hurry, eyes down, brushing through the crowds like a guilty man walking away from the hanging of an innocent one, or simply like one who knew that crowds always walked in the wrong direction.

  Rumours abounded: He had buried the money like Kidd. He had spent it on whores and a hundred ships. He was funding the restoration of the Stuarts. He was building an army against the Spanish enemy now France was at war again. He was king of the country he had discovered in the unknown lands of the South Seas. All of these speculations and more circulated along the trade routes of the world and hung in the air behind him. Always behind him, following in his footprints.

  Devlin was closing on thirty, old for a pirate to be sure but young for a man of his wealth. The pirate Devlin. Patrick Devlin. Sold by his father, servant to his master, chosen by his men.

  Like a hand of cards he had gambled with the easy fortune of youth and won. Now he was a pirate captain of a hundred souls and the richest man in a Gomorrah of his own making. He had weaved his own tapestry by stealing a cache of gold from under the noses of the English and French navies and the omniscience of the Trading Companies that filled their governments’ coffers.

  Devlin had bucked them all, ducked the shots against him, and him an Irishman at that. He left them coughing and spluttering over their ledgers whilst he and his men splashed brandy over their curses. And now he had seen his name in print. He had been marked. To be hunted. To be hanged.

  For infamy has a price.

  He pulled a whole gold Louis from his waistcoat to silence the man who rowed him to the Shadow’s anchor, far out in the bay where she could turn and run if need be. The old fellow had been reluctant to ferry him across the rising waves but the profile of the dead King of France had settled his stomach.

  The squall was just getting into its stride, the wherryman’s oars barely skimming along, and he cursed his greed that set him about in such weather. The sea was as grey as the sky; the rain sprayed up from the water as well as down from above.

  Devlin did not appear to notice. He sat forward and looked over the old man’s cloaked shoulder to the ship beyond, anchored fore and aft yet still dancing against the swell as if pleased at the sight of him returning.

  Shadow was a small light-frigate, ably suited to the narrow channels of the Mediterranean but too weak for a ship of the line and thus classed a fifth rater in the Fighting Instructions of 1653.

  She was French by birth and had been commissioned by Valentim Mendes, the governor of the small Verdes island of Sao Nicolau, in 1715. She had begun her pirate life two years later when Devlin plucked her from the pocket of said Valentim, and the Sombra became the Shadow.

  Nine nine-pounders stood on the weatherdeck, and another three beneath the quarterdeck and part of the Great Cabin. Two more were on the quarterdeck and one at the fo’c’sle and still two more to chase in the bow, a distinction of Mediterranean ships where the low winds hindered turning to broadside. Her final complement was a brace of niners at the stern waiting to poke out of the Great Cabin, and two breech-loading half-pound swivels along the quarterdeck rail – but the pirates had added yokes to mount more.

  Shadow was a fine ship, chipped here and there but her black and red paint still bright. New strakes had been nailed over old where she had been holed once or twice, and some furniture was missing along her rails and gunwales where misguided fools had attempted to defend themselves with shot and grape. To be fair the Atlantic treated her narrow beam unkindly but she was still here, and the pirates, whose normal way had been to trade up or even down when a ship became worn or in need of repair, had kept her and careened and caulked her with care. They painted that which wanted painting and took from others whatever fresh sail or rigging she had need of.

  Perhaps if she had not been so young when they had found her, or perhaps if she had known other crews and seas years before, she would not have sat so well for so long. Aye, perhaps.

  A short time later Devlin climbed up the Shadow’s ladder as waves ran up her freeboard, soaking his boots while the wind tugged at his billowing coat and tried to pull him from the ropes as he hauled himself through the entry port.

  His boots clamped on the deck as it yawed against the rising wind. Black Bill had already set the storm shrouds and sheets. Good. She was secure, anchored at every quarter to roll merrily against the waves.

  Men tugged at their forelocks as Devlin made the short walk to his Great Cabin. He passed through his coach into the room, the sea through the stern windows already appearing to climb against them. Spray streamed off the panes, crept in through the brass catches and pooled along the sill like tiny islands.

  Black Bill sat at the table, rounded and complacent after a lunch of Solomon Gundy and port, with the peppery smell of his dish thick in the air. A Virginian cornpipe dangled from his mouth and smouldered in his long deep beard, hazing the cabin with blue tobacco smoke.

  ‘Cap’n,’ he belched. Dog-Leg, ship’s cook, shuffled forward and slapped a cup of peaberry coffee into Devlin’s fist.

  Devlin patted the shoulder of the one-handed man who had once been Seth Toomb
s’s cook. He put the cup down and drew out the Mercator map of the world from its becket, rolled off the ribbon, and spread it on the table. Bill pulled his pewter plate away from the map to rest against the fiddle rope around the table’s edge, designed to stop plates and glasses sliding off during rough seas.

  ‘What goes on, lad?’ Bill asked, ruffled by the black look of a man he generally knew to be as calm as waving wheat. Devlin weighted down the corners of the map as he relayed that which he knew.

  Peter Sam had been removed from their account. Some deviant Whig who had signed himself to be called ‘Ignatius’ had bid them to Charles Town to assure Peter’s safety or risk his death and the death warrants of them all.

  ‘How would one make off with Peter?’ was all Bill asked. Devlin said nothing as he opened a baize-lined drawer under the tabletop and picked out his dividers, compass card and hinged rule. Aye, it seemed unlikely – unholy, even. Peter Sam, all six foot two of him, feared for his terrible look along all the Shadow’s decks despite his predilection for delicate young men that would otherwise have marked him for scorn.

  The great Peter Sam, who had even tried to kill Devlin when the chance came after his part in the death of Seth Toombs, their former captain.

  Peter Sam, who thought to leave Devlin on The Island before the gold had become theirs. Aye, it would have to be a prodigious foe that could lift Sam out of the world.

  Both men hunched over the chart as they plotted between them. Peter had been vanished away maybe for two days and Devlin marked with two crosses the limits to where a ship could be now, be it one day, be it two.

  The wind whined through the windows and the doors of the coach rattled against the coming storm as they staked out a route to Charles Town, that most successful Carolinas colony, whose rice plantations fed much of England’s poor and whose deerskins warmed many an English Lady’s hands.

  Shadow might make the journey in forty-seven days if she drew the greatest and noblest following wind.

  The Talefan, a brig with bluffer lines, the ship Devlin had set Dandon to take, could maybe cut no more than ten days from that tally.

  Bill drew calmly on his pipe, seeing the frustration rising in Devlin as they both came to the same conclusion.

  ‘Steady, Cap’n,’ he advised. ‘Can’t be helped. We’ll get there when we get there. Can’t make the world turn any faster. We could still catch ’em.’

  Devlin threw down his divider, turning away to the stern windows and the storm being born outside. Seeing his own faint reflection in the glass mocking him, he banged a fist against the pane.

  ‘I have given this letter not enough thought, Bill. I have treated the man who wrote it like some kind of magician.’ His voice was bitter, his breath steaming in gasps against the glass.

  Bill exhaled a plume of blue smoke. ‘Cap’n?’

  Devlin spun round. ‘Look at it! Look at the letter, Bill!’

  Bill ran his eyes clumsily over the script. ‘I’m at a loss to know your mind, Devlin.’

  Devlin strode across the cabin, his forehead furrowed in thought.

  ‘It says he will know the day, the hour I receive the note, as if he has plotted my path with me. Knows my every hour, by damn!’ he cursed. Devlin waited for a response from his sailing master, but Bill was still running his troubled gaze down the page.

  Devlin’s rant went on. ‘A bluffen brag! He could not know that! He does not know that! If he truly knew where we were he would know we could not get to him in thirty days! I reckon that note has been sent to every town from Maracaibo to Trepassey. Yet I read it and believed it true. I read the fancy hand, the noble address and was swayed to believe that some soul has watched us all! I have grown flabby this past year, Bill. This storm I believed a mal content on the side of this villain, but it has stayed my hand and given me thought.’

  He stamped, rattling the lamps in their chains. ‘He knows me well enough to be sure. He has plied me with blood to come to him. Not gold or jewels. Blood.’

  His voice dropped to a mutter as he paced the room. ‘Takes a man from me. A trusted man. Aye, he knows me well enough. That will draw me out to be sure.’

  He grabbed a bottle from his desk, an amber liquid within. ‘We have been followed. Watched. For Peter is gone, but gone where?’ He drank, tipping the bottle high, releasing it seconds later with a gasp.

  ‘Hah!’ he snapped at Bill. ‘Did not you and I and Dandon all voice the same thought?’

  Bill shook his head and shrugged.

  ‘Who could take Peter Sam? Did you not say such a thing?’

  ‘Aye, but …’

  ‘But nothing. It would take you and me both to make him kneel on Judgement Day!’

  ‘That’s as may be. So what do you say, Cap’n?’

  ‘I say that I was expected to weigh anchor the hour I got this note. To sail at all speed after some phantom ship and plot my course for the Americas without a glance behind me.’ He drank again. ‘I’ll wager you half my gold that Peter Sam is still here. Easier to chain him in some prison than drag him to a ship through a town where I have a hundred men at any time to get past.’ He swigged again, feeling the warmth of the rum mixing with the glow of his thoughts.

  Bill watched his captain take a long draught. ‘Aye, that could be it to be sure. We’d have been chasing after nothing but our own wind. All the while Peter Sam would be behind us, safe from our rescue.’ Bill damped down his pipe. ‘Fools to be sure. So then, we should stay? Find him?’

  ‘No,’ Devlin’s dark look was returning. ‘We sail. I need to see this man who goads me.’ He drank again. ‘Pick ten choice men to stay here and scour for Peter. Will Magnes to lead them. Spread some coin about. With luck their guard will drop when they see Shadow sailing. They will think us all gone.’

  ‘Aye, we could all stay too. If Peter Sam is here we could find him that much the quicker to be sure.’

  Devlin looked hard at Bill. ‘He goads me, Bill. This soul pulls me to him like a rope is wrapped about me. Are you not yet tired of fine gentlemen beckoning you like a dog?’ He chinked the bottle back on the desk. ‘And Peter Sam? He means perhaps more to the men than I. How would they feel if I let their man be taken? What kind of lord would I be to them then? Aye, it’s a trap of sorts no doubt. Dragging me,’ he stabbed the bottle at Bill, ‘dragging us back.’

  ‘Yet you will go? Sail into a trap?’

  Devlin did not reply. His face showed warmth and his eyes sparkled. Bill understood: Madagascar had no game. No glory. No craic for a pirate.

  Devlin stepped back to the map. ‘I need you, Bill, to sail the Shadow. Show them we are leaving whilst the others look for Peter here.’

  ‘And what of you, Cap’n. Where’ll you be?’ Bill asked, one eye to the storm now broiling the air in the cabin.

  Devlin scraped the ‘waggoner’ from beneath the table. It was the Shadow’s manifesto of maps. Soundings and charts pilfered from other ships. Some lay between oilskin wallets, others were secured with genteel ribbons. It was the pirate’s record of the world on paper, written in different voices, each with their own longitude depending on the nation from whose pocket they had been wrenched. It would be a long time yet before Greenwich set the meridian for the world.

  Devlin flipped through the maps and stopped at a dog-eared French chart of the Greater Antilles. He waved Bill over and pointed at a dot almost hidden in a fold.

  ‘You and the Shadow, once past Ascension, are to make for one of the Deadman’s. I’ll go to Charles Town.’

  Bill looked down at the unnamed spot and nodded. Several islands carried the name, desolate sands where souls could be marooned and night-sailors have their keels ripped out by invisible reefs. Bill knew this one fair enough.

  ‘If it is a trap, set for fools, I don’t want to gift our girl to the dogs as well. We’ll keep some of our cards under the table. Once I leave Charles Town, if I leave Charles Town, we’ll meet there. If you don’t find me … come and get me.’

  ‘L
eave a sign at Deadman if you has to leave before us. No telling how late this girl will run, Cap’n. I don’t wants to charge Charles Town if I can choose not to.’

  ‘Aye. A bottle under a sword-stroked tree. Agreed.’ Devlin still admired the old ways of these strange men he had become a part of. The sign was a simple thing yet baffling to the Navy hounds that hunted them.

  Letters flowed back to all the courts of Europe from the myriad of governors that commanded the pearls of the Caribbean expressing wonder at how it was possible their merchants could be attacked by fleets of pirates under the same flag yet their navies seemed unable to stumble across six or even seven outlaw ships boldly cruising the waters beneath their bows. The answer lay in the islands themselves.

  A naval squadron would sail within topsails’ sight of each other. Their messages to each other were flags and cannon fire. The pirates sailed out of sight, alone for the most part – the good ones anyway.

  They used the thousands of smaller spits of land to careen, smoke and caulk. Then a bottle with a note inside it would be left behind, buried, its location marked by perhaps a volcanic rock that should not be there, a cross carved on a tree, a fresh-cut branch or any number of contrivances agreed upon in advance.

  It told of a date, or the next destination, all left for their brothers to find. It meant a chain of command stretching hundreds of miles and the navy scratching their heads.

  Devlin slapped his hat down. ‘I’ll get Dog-Leg to feed me, then sleep out this storm. We’ll make sail together. Make our enemies lax with our departure. By six a man will be here to welcome me to my new consort. Four hours from now this squall be over I’ll wager.’

  Bill cocked an ear, certain he had missed something important.